Lucky Cuban rappers?

I read with interest the Feb. 7 article El Crítico: Music as a subversive instrument in Cuba, which reported the Cuban rapper’s resistance to prison rules and realized he and others are lucky they went to prison in Cuba and not in the United States.

If they had refused to follow prison rules in the United States, the guards would have boiled them alive like they did with Darren Rainey, gassed them to death like they did to Randall Jordan-Aparo or they would have beaten them to death like Frank Valdez or Latandra Ellington.

They are lucky as juveniles they never ended up at Florida’s death camp for teenagers, the Dozier White House, where even now anthropologists are looking for the bodies of children murdered by Florida guards.

There are many important municipal elections scheduled this year throughout Miami-Dade County. The impact of those elections on local residents spans across many issues, like personal safety and security, taxation, and neighborhood recareation programs.

Because these issues often affect the quality of residential life and the delivery of municipal public services, residents should take more than passing interest in who their candidates are and what they stand for. It is most important for all of us to become informed and vote.